OCTOBER 23, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 16

I Know, It's Only Rock 'n' Roll
Despite widespread talk of a new rebelliousness, a Chinese musician says rock can't find an audience
By KAISER KUO

More than 20,000 young Chinese got to their feet and roared with anticipation as the Year 2000 New Music Concert got under way last month at Beijing's Olympic stadium. True to form, the police surrounding the field ordered them back in their seats. But they needn't have bothered: the bands' lackluster performances quickly calmed things down. By the end of the second number, the audience was already seated, clapping politely. The rest of the two-and-a-half hour show was marked by sporadic enthusiasm—a few hands in the air, some homemade banners waving. Cheering erupted occasionally as rock icons like Tang Dynasty, my former band, performed their hits. But the overall reception was lukewarm, and the stadium started emptying midway through the headline act, pop-rock band Black Panther.

Things were quite different 10 years ago, when the Modern Music Festival—the first major state-sanctioned concert to feature Chinese rock bands—was held at Beijing's Capital Stadium. Eager to show that things had loosened up after the previous year's crackdown, authorities gave six homegrown bands a much-needed opportunity for exposure. Some subsequently landed record contracts that propelled them to modest fame. The picture looked bright for Chinese rockers: with record-company backing, a growing fan base and the approval—however grudging—of Communist Party authorities, rock music appeared to be on its way to becoming a force in urban Chinese youth culture.

Yet a decade later, there is little cause for celebration. China's rock musicians still face major obstacles. But the problem isn't official prudishness. This time, it's the musicians' fault for not rousing their listeners. Rockers have to learn the same lessons as the country's other entrepreneurs: to stay competitive in an increasingly global marketplace, you have to retool, assess the competition and know your audience.

It's a tough market to crack. Chinese—even relatively cosmopolitan urbanites—do not, on the whole, care for rock. Instead, their tastes lean toward the harmless, slickly produced pop churned out by Hong Kong and Taiwan. While mainland rock has made some inroads and won a devoted core following, it remains a peripheral phenomenon even in Beijing—the only city where it has ever stood a chance. Promoters of better-known rock acts can occasionally sell out stadium shows in the provinces. But most of those who buy tickets are merely curious; they are not die-hard fans and aren't likely to become converts.

Even among aficionados, increasing access to Western rock (often on pirated CDs) has raised the bar. The gap between Chinese rock—with its lackluster production, often mediocre musicianship and mostly derivative styles—and the polished, confident music from Britain and, especially, the U.S. has become all too glaring. "Put any American rock CD against one recorded in China and there's just no comparison. The production technology is decades behind in China," says Wang Lei, a 22-year-old Beijing music critic.

The economics are troubling as well. Rock isn't immune to the standard array of bugbears in China—poor infrastructure, lack of professionalism, piracy. And sound and lighting equipment is far below international standards. Thin Man vocalist Dai Qin complained to me after a sound check at the Year 2000 show: "When we played the Fuji Rock Festival [in August], the little pavilion where we played had a bigger sound system than this whole stadium." The few Chinese rock musicians fortunate enough to have performed abroad have returned to China despairing at the bush-league quality of the local music industry.

At first, some bands did their best to turn these differences into strengths and package themselves as uniquely "Chinese." But rock music has proven stubbornly resistant to sinicization. Acts that have sought to promote themselves as "rock music with Chinese characteristics"—my own erstwhile outfit stands out as the most glaring example—have done little more than add the odd Chinese zither or flute passage, or overuse the pentatonic scale in composition.

Extensive Western coverage of the Chinese rock scene has led to complacency by giving many local acts—as vain and attention-hungry as their Western counterparts—an unhealthily inflated sense of their own importance. The Western press has assumed that China's rock musicians were forged in the crucible of the 1989 demonstrations and has seen Chinese rock through the lens of 1960s protest politics. Thus Cui Jian, who played an abortive show in Tiananmen Square in May 1989, becomes "China's Bob Dylan," and China in the 1990s becomes the U.S. in the 1960s.

But these analogies miss the point. For the most part Chinese rockers have much more in common with Guns N' Roses than with Bob Dylan. The overwhelming majority of Chinese musicians who dream of rock stardom aren't interested in politics, though many are perceptive enough to know what Western journalists want to hear and cynical enough to repeat it to them. For most, rock is a metaphor for the American dream: money, sex, fame, the unbridled pursuit of happiness.

The more promising Chinese bands know that they can fulfill those dreams only through hard work, passion for the music and a healthy dose of realism. Thin Man, a hard-edged funk-rock outfit, regularly packs Beijing's clubs and thrills crowds with its high-octane showmanship. But the band's powerful, in-your-face stage energy has scared off state-run television, forcing members to focus their promotional efforts online and to tour aggressively. "We know what we're up against," says Dai, the band's charismatic 29-year-old, ethnic Mongolian front man. "It's a difficult road ahead, but we're not going to compromise and we're going to persevere. Endurance is victory."

Kaiser Kuo, who cofounded the band Tang Dynasty in 1989, is English-language editor-in-chief at ChinaNow.com

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